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Democratic Party chairperson Lo Kin-hei speaks to the media outside the Legislative Council, in Hong Kong, on May 27.
ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP/Getty Images
Lo Kin-hei went straight into politics after graduating from university with a degree in social work.
In 2006, that made him something of a rarity. Hong Kong had a long tradition of pro-democracy activism, but the city’s young people were often portrayed as politically apathetic, more focused on making money.
This had completely changed by the time Mr. Lo became, at 36, the youngest-ever chairman of the Hong Kong Democratic Party last year. Youth-led protests rocked the city in 2014 and 2019, attracting global media attention and making stars of figures like Joshua Wong and Nathan Law.
This transformation was felt beyond the streets. The pro-democracy establishment, of which Mr. Lo’s party was the unequivocal leader, found itself marginalized in the new, more radical opposition movement. Many who protested in 2019, while they focused their anger on the government, would happily vent frustration at the old guard they felt had failed to gain tangible political reforms despite decades of effort, of promises that a slow and steady approach would pay off.
This week, Mr. Lo was among more than 200 district councillors to resign from the municipal bodies, the last redoubt of the opposition, saying the current environment made it impossible to continue his work.
“The kind of uncertainty is a major constraint for me to carry out my community work. … I don’t want to be threatened [with expulsion] for a very long time,” he said in an online news conference.
That environment has been shaped by the national security law Beijing imposed on the city last year, under which dozens have been arrested or imprisoned: Mr. Lo is something of a rarity as a prominent activist who is, for now, not in jail.
The mass resignations were sparked by a new “patriotism” test to be applied for all candidates to run for public office, which is expected to disqualify most pro-democracy councillors. The move by Mr. Lo and other Democrats renewed speculation that the party will boycott or be unable to run in elections later this year to the city’s parliament, where they were once the leading opposition force.
Founded by barrister Martin Lee in the run-up to Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese rule, the Democratic Party was once a model for the type of “patriotic opposition” paramount leader Deng Xiaoping envisioned.
“A patriot is one who respects the Chinese nation, sincerely supports the motherland’s resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong and wishes not to impair Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability,” Mr. Deng said in 1984, as negotiations with London wrapped up. “Those who meet these requirements are patriots, whether they believe in capitalism or feudalism or even slavery. We don’t demand that they be in favour of China’s socialist system; we only ask them to love the motherland and Hong Kong.”
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Mr. Lee supported the handover, and even sat on the Chinese government body that drafted the city’s post-1997 constitution, although he left it after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Democratic Party members negotiated directly with Beijing in 2010 over political reform proposals, leading to a split in the wider pro-democracy camp.
In April, Mr. Lee was given an 11-month suspended sentence in relation to a protest in 2019, and the 83-year-old has retreated from public life. Dozens of other Democratic Party members, including ex-legislators and district councillors, have been imprisoned or face a raft of charges. The new loyalty tests mean those who remain out of prison will likely be unable to hang onto their seats, or stand for election in future.
“You cannot say that you are patriotic but you do not love the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party or you do not respect it,” Erick Tsang, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, said when announcing the electoral reforms in February. “This does not make sense.”
Last month, China’s top representative to the city, Luo Huining, said those who called for “an end to one-party rule” – such as the Democrats – posed an “existential threat” to Hong Kong, and that for the city to prosper “it is imperative to uphold the leadership of the Communist Party of China.”
Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the SOAS University of London, said “the scope for the Democratic Party or any party similar to it to function meaningfully in an election is coming to an end.
“The ‘loyalty requirement’ is really a requirement for any ‘political party’ that intends to operate in Hong Kong to declare its loyalty to or in effect accept the leadership of the Communist Party,” Prof. Tsang added in an e-mail. “Any political party that does that ceases to have credibility to citizens of Hong Kong who believe in democracy.”
Pointing to the Democratic Party’s past attempts to negotiate with the government, Alvin Y.H. Cheung, a barrister and expert on Hong Kong’s legal system, said its fate was a lesson to anyone “who is thinking about giving up something to Beijing in return for some perceived future benefit.”
A spokesperson for the Democratic Party did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Lo also did not respond. He told local media in May his colleagues were conflicted on whether to fight on under the new restrictions.
He pointed to historical examples in Taiwan, Poland and Czechoslovakia, where opposition groups “ran for any elections they have – no matter [if] it is a very fair election, or it is not a fair election.
“One of the reasons for them is that they want to keep up the momentum and they want to keep their voice being heard.”
For decades, the Democratic Party has been a leading voice of Hong Kong’s opposition movement. But the decision to keep speaking out may no longer be in its hands.
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